[0:00]right now on lawn crime report breaking overnight previously sealed documents detailing jeffrey epstein's alleged crimes and former girlfriend jelane maxwell's involvement made public
[0:11]what we're learning from the bombshell documents and about the alleged traffic ring maxwell and epstein wren coming up plus deliberations are underway in the wrongful death case
[0:21]filed by the parents of susan cox powell nearly 11 years after her tragic disappearance will the jury deliver the justice long sought by the family
[0:31]unfortunately the only way that we can render justice in a situation like this is through the awarding of money and later president trump meets with the family of slain army specialist vanessa
[0:42]guillen in an emotional meeting the president backs the congressional bill named in guillen's honor it hit me very hard i saw what happened to your daughter vanessa this is the long crime report diving
[0:54]into true crime and all the legal stories making headlines it's friday july thirty first twenty twenty thanks so much for joining us on this
[1:07]friday we have a lot to get to on today's law and crime report and of course we are going to start with that big news out of new york city late last night about 10 p.m we got a big document dump
[1:18]nearly seven pages of documents in the jalane maxwell trial documents her team had been fighting to keep secret now these documents date back to a 2015 deposition in a
[1:29]case that had been filed by one of epstein's accusers virginia jewfrey and what we are seeing in these documents is depositions from 2015 from 2016 rather as well as emails that had
[1:40]not been seen before there is a lot to get to and i want to bring in long crimes own aaron keller to walk us through it he has been up all night parsing through these 700 pages
[1:51]erin thanks so much for joining us on the show this afternoon good to be here stacey it's been a long night that blurred into the morning trying to get a handle on what's in these
[2:02]documents that have been released yeah and i know that there are a lot of different points a lot of sort of little nuggets in here but let me just start with
[2:12]your question aaron are there any major bombshells coming out of these documents anything that really surprised you or is this a lot of stuff that we already knew
[2:21]about the allegations in the case much of it stacey is information we knew previously but we're seeing it in a more official form than through media interviews and
[2:32]reports so it carries a little bit more weight when it has a court stamp on it and when it's set in a deposition where penalties attach one of the most interesting parts of this that's been released
[2:43]uh in this new tranche of documents were four pages of emails back and forth between jesus maxwell and jeffrey epstein himself and those documents dated 2015 appear to read
[2:54]uh like a let's get our stories straight set of information on how to respond to accusations so that's interesting and it's especially interesting because jason maxwell
[3:05]said when she was arrested recently that she hadn't talked to jeffrey epstein in about a decade well those documents are only five years old yeah i mean that's right we know she had
[3:16]claimed she had no contact with epstein in a decade but clearly these email emails under uh undermine that claim what does that do for her case overall i mean clearly it shows she's
[3:27]not been completely truthful well it raises a lot of questions and we're going to have to see exactly how the criminal judge might deal with it if it comes to that in the court of public opinion it's
[3:38]certainly a slam against her um yeah i'd have to go back and look at the exact terminology she used during the recent hearing in the criminal case it doesn't look good but could it be explained away by saying
[3:50]uh well i thought it was about 10 years ago maybe it was five it was some point in the distant past she may be able to try to explain it away it's a matter of perspective and interpretation she could be hit back with it though of course if a prosecutor
[4:01]really wanted to dig into her right well let's talk about another big name mentioned in this there are a few names a lot of names we already knew uh prince andrew alan dershowitz and of
[4:13]course bill clinton uh but i think one thing that is new here is that uh bill clinton has said again and again through his representatives he had never been on epstein's private island but
[4:24]as you see up on the screen during the deposition uh uh virginia jewfrey said bill clinton was on epstein's private plane uh going to the island i'm going to read it to you the
[4:34]attorney said when you say you asked him why is bill clinton here where was here she says on the island when you were present with jeffrey epstein and bill clinton on the island who else was there and she says jillaine
[4:46]emmy and there was two young girls that i could identify i never really knew them wells anyway it was just two girls from new york so from that we can't infer too much but what is your take on
[4:57]it in terms of uh former president bill clinton's involvement in all of this aaron again hear this attorney he said she said if we believe the depositions
[5:08]from the accuser here then bill clinton was there the bottom line though is that if even if you believe he was there there's no direct evidence that he was involved
[5:18]in any uh alleged sex act whatsoever the information released yesterday just indicates well that the accuser says he was present
[5:27]and then it leads to suppositions about exactly why he may have been present he says he wasn't was he there was he not there it depends on who you want to believe and even if you
[5:39]again believe the accuser it doesn't directly tie bill clinton into any sex act it just says he was there and that's all and i know you had to dig
[5:49]deep to even find his name right because you wrote in in your articles on long crime.com very comprehensive that in order to find references not just to clinton but also to president trump you really had to go through and look
[6:00]for those as for president trump he was really only mentioned as being the owner of mar-a-lago right exactly so this document dump came down in 47
[6:11]separate court documents so to look at them all here's what we did starting at 10 o'clock last night on lawn crime.com we downloaded each and every one of those 47 documents
[6:22]and then i merged them all together in one master document it's more than 600 pages long it's been up on lawn crime.com since last night we got it up about an hour after it dropped you can read
[6:32]through the whole thing but here's the thing some of the pdf documents are actual text documents you can search through them so obviously the first tactic i took was to try to search for keywords some of the documents however are just
[6:44]scanned images and they don't respond to a text search so for those parts of the document we had to go through page by page and line by line to see exactly whose name existed
[6:55]in those documents and that was the most time consuming part of this process the references to president trump and the the one reference i found thus far uh excuse me the one reference i found
[7:06]thus far to president trump and then them several references to president clinton required that line by line read through scanned documents that did not respond to any surge so this is a painstaking process to go
[7:17]through all of it we were up until about 2 30 in the morning we're back up at it first thing this morning uh with the aid of plenty of coffee and we're continuing to pour through those documents for you erin i know you have a lot more work to
[7:29]do but before i let you go let's quickly talk about alan dershowitz's role in all this obviously his name has been uh in documents in accusations about this case from the very beginning in the
[7:40]deposition virginia jewfrey alleged multiple times that she was forced to have sex with him but interestingly alan dershowitz is out this morning on twitter and elsewhere saying he's exonerated by these
[7:50]documents help us make sense of that so that's his claim he's trying to defend himself as he has all along in this case he has said
[7:59]steadfastly and uh and and with uh frequency that he did absolutely nothing wrong here so he's basically saying the same thing bill clinton said i
[8:10]associated with these people but i didn't know that they were up to anything wrong and i didn't do anything wrong myself that's what dershowitz is saying and he's repeating that claim again this morning on twitter what's interesting is
[8:22]that he's also tried to take the stance that he somehow helped to get these documents released to the public which is interesting because legally he
[8:32]has opposed the release of the documents now that the documents are out he's turned around and said well these documents actually support me because there's nothing bombastic in
[8:42]them beyond what we knew before in other words nothing new here folks and trust me when i have tried to refute everything that has been said about me in the past so
[8:53]that's his stance on things right now but again if you listen to the accuser the underlying accusations are still contained in this new tranche of documents that was released late
[9:03]night i want to mention just one more detail that i noticed and that's making a lot of headlines because perhaps it's one of the more salacious ones out there aaron and that is
[9:13]that virginia jufree testified in these depositions that she saw jelaine involved in sex acts many times with other women on jeffrey epstein's properties
[9:22]and i wonder um if just from a personal perspective if that's one of the reasons in addition to many that she wanted these documents sealed up what are your thoughts on that it could be it's hard to look inside the
[9:35]mind of someone who's currently sitting in a prison cell awaiting trial on serious federal sex crimes charges look that could be the bottom line is her attorneys
[9:46]went through a lot of work to try to keep these documents sealed and remember again stacy one more thing about this more documents are set to be unsealed as late as monday so this is one document
[9:58]dump if we can call it that there's more that are in the queue to be unsealed and that's assuming that the second circuit court of appeals come in and try to prevent those
[10:08]additional documents from being opened up well aaron we know you will stay on top of all of it for us we appreciate your hard work thus far digging in and i know you have a lot more work to do today and
[10:19]as you said on monday when we expect to see even more documents so thanks so much for being with us on the long crime report we're going to be right back with much more on this document dump as aaron called it because
[10:30]there are a lot more details we have not yet gotten to stay with us and welcome back to law and crime report
[10:41]lots more to talk about about that late night document dump in jalane maxwell's federal case as we were just talking about with aaron keller there are a lot of details in there a lot of them that we already
[10:52]knew but some new nuggets as well i want to bring in my two guests who will be with for the rest of the show i have leslie richard chambers who's joining us from baton rouge louisiana today she's a
[11:03]former prosecutor and trial attorney and judge ashley wilcott a trial attorney and juvenile court judge ladies thanks so much for being here to help parse through this detailed story with us as well as the other big
[11:14]topics we have today for having us so um let's first talk about the release of these documents in general i mean this was our lead story last friday that
[11:25]jalane's attorneys were fighting hard to keep these documents sealed they date back to a 2016 deposition that was filed that was taken during a 2015
[11:37]defamation case filed by one of epstein's alleged victims virginia jewfrey as i said epstein's attorneys had been making motion after motion to keep things
[11:48]under seal but obviously the judge released them and i want to read what she said because she seemed none too happy with maxwell's attorneys in how they dealt uh with
[11:59]their 11th hour request let's uh put up her statement now and what she said she said um that you know she admonished maxwell's attorneys for filing an 11th hour
[12:10]request for reconsideration and she said that the court is troubled but not surprised that miss maxwell has yet again sought to muddy the waters as the clock ticks closer to midnight so judge
[12:22]wilcott let me start with you i mean what do you make of judge prescott's statement here i mean as i said clearly none too happy and really admonishing maxwell's team for the way
[12:32]they have handled their requests in dealing with these documents sure absolutely so in a perfect world every court wants to see things done timely and so
[12:42]it's too little too late when you come in at the 11th hour more than once to make these arguments a court understandably gets frustrated right because they want the opportunity
[12:53]for all of the parties to be heard for all the issues to be raised but there's no reason really that it has to be done at the 11th hour every single time once in a while does that happen as the
[13:03]nature of the beast as you know when we litigate absolutely but does it have to happen every time no and i just want to stacy kind of go backwards and say the whole reason that parties want to
[13:15]keep documents such as these quiet right is because there are salacious details that everybody wants to know that are in these documents but
[13:26]also as a bigger item they want to make sure that the personal identifiable information or information about non-parties is not disclosed because they do want to protect that
[13:37]information but that's why a court can say it can be released but redact that information yeah leslie i want to get your thoughts on this because at one point it sort of
[13:48]seemed like maxwell's team was throwing anything they could at the wall to try to get the judge to keep these documents under sealed do you agree i do and you know oftentimes when you
[14:00]have attorneys that sort of throw spaghetti at the walls right they're they're they're trying really hard to find something to make something stick to really distract from
[14:12]the primary issues and you know it's a it's a tactic that i've seen so many times play out in in court um with the polls and council and you know oftentimes when opposing
[14:22]council knows that they don't have enough supporting information or evidence uh if you will to uh unsubstantiate the claims of either the prosecutor or the plaintiffs
[14:33]you tend to see these tactics happen and i'm pretty sure that the judge on our panel so they can also attest to that and um you know i i really hope that at some point that
[14:44]the attorneys really finally get their things together get their stuff together because it looks like this is something that they have routinely done in practice
[14:54]waiting into the last minute sort of seemingly foul maybe frivolous or um just unsubstantiated um
[15:04]emotions particularly when there has probably been enough time between the date of the filing and the previous court date for them to uh to put their house in order i guess
[15:15]and so i i really hope that at some point that these lawyers really get their things together and and make sure that they put forth a proper defense for uh for miss maxwell if that's what their intent
[15:27]is yeah i mean to quote some of you know how aaron or aaron keller recap this uh you know he noted that the maxwell's team fired filed the blizzard of documents
[15:38]wednesday night into thursday morning they had even asked for a telephone conference with prescott they filed hundreds of pages with the appeals court but again it was all in vain so now these documents have been made public and we're expecting to see even more
[15:49]documents on monday so let's go back to some of the things that we're learning and one interesting nugget that our reporters uncovered is that virginia jeffrey alleges that back in
[16:00]uh uh 2011 actually she first notified the fbi let's uh show a an expert an excerpt rather from her deposition transcript
[16:11]the attorney asked did the photograph ever leave your possession for a while she's referring to the photograph now seen around the world of her with prince andrew she says i gave it to the fbi
[16:23]okay when did you get it back when they took copies of it when was that 2011 when they came to interview you yes so from 2011 um basically you know so she had it from 2011 on but before then the fbi had
[16:34]already seen this this photograph what can we infer from that because as we know jeffrey epstein was not charged until recently julian maxwell only taken into custody
[16:44]last month so what does this tell us uh judge wilcott you know i don't know what it tells us it means that there's evidence out there that information was had but wasn't acted on and i don't i can't answer why
[16:56]that happened i don't know in the mind of law enforcement or or those who have been involved in this but i am going to say this the more information that comes out the more documents as aaron mentioned
[17:06]are going to be released and reviewed the more specific details are going to come out that make it clear that there's a whole lot more to this story
[17:16]in this big picture than we know or have heard and i believe that other people were aware of but nothing had happened at the time it's almost like it was ignored and i hate to suggest it but you do wonder
[17:28]if it's because there are people in power with financial means that it was just kind of ignored as to the allegations and that something might have been going on
[17:38]uh let's go back to what we were discussing with aaron which is the role of former president bill clinton in all of this we know that bill clinton has admitted that he was on jeffrey epstein's private plane
[17:49]on four different occasions but in the uh deposition with jufree uh taken back in 2016 she says that he was also on jeffrey island jeffrey epstein's private island when they were young girls present
[18:01]an island where she says orgies were happening everywhere an island where she says she saw jalane maxwell engaging in orgies with other young women
[18:11]uh what uh you know and aaron raised a good point that it's a case of he said for she said because the clinton team will continue to deny that the former president was on epstein's island but leslie
[18:22]uh what is your take is this any more incriminating than what we had seen before for the former president i think it could be considering the uh
[18:33]what we know about president clinton's history and his involvement with affairs in his own administration i think what's unfortunate here too is
[18:44]that former president clinton was even associated with someone like epstein particularly when it sounds like a lot of people had common knowledge of
[18:56]what was going on on that island and i don't want to sound accusatory towards the former president and say you know yeah you you have to
[19:06]have known what was going on i i think that it is overwhelming to uh have a former president with the access that he has um the the
[19:18]rolodex if you will that he has and knowing usually our most of our politicians know back stories of people right i i just i just
[19:28]hope that he is uh truthful when he says that he had no idea that these sorts of things were going on on the island and that he did not participate in them however i do believe that in the
[19:40]in the view of public opinion that that might be hard to believe well we will wait and see what more will be released on monday uh all other names mentioned in the
[19:51]documents out so far in terms of who virginia jewfrey recalls seeing on epstein's island were al gore naomi campbell and heidi klum i'm sorry not on his island but rather his private
[20:03]jet which she said was nicknamed the lolita express again if you want to read the documents yourself head over to longcrime.com where we have all nearly 700 pages of
[20:13]them uploaded to our site we'll be back with much more right after this and welcome back let's talk about
[20:24]vanessa guillen she is the young army specialist just 20 years old from houston texas who was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in the armory room at fort hood army
[20:35]base where she worked this happened back in april her family says she was getting ready to file a sexual harassment report against her alleged killer who was a fellow soldier
[20:45]at fort hood that soldier also 20 years old specialist aaron david robinson uh he expected in her disappearance killed himself after he was confronted by police in
[20:56]colleen texas earlier this month well yesterday the family of vanessa guillen was invited to the white house to meet with president trump and talk about the bill they are
[21:07]pushing the bill is being called hashtag i am vanessa guillen and it is of course named in honor of vanessa it would allow active duty service members to report sexual harassment or assault
[21:18]to a third party outside their chain of command the idea behind this to eliminate fears of retaliation that often discourage soldiers from reporting
[21:28]sexual abuse by superiors let's take a listen now to that meeting in the white house between the president and vanessa gans family what we could do collectively to get justice for
[21:39]vanessa is we need reform we need a bill and you know i drafted a bill the hashtag i'm vanessa guillen
[21:49]mark wayne mullen from oklahoma good guy great guy i love him um he introduced he it's right now alleged counsel but what it does is it says
[22:01]the way we have the eeoc which is the equal employment opportunity commission how if someone can report something you go to the eeoc we're looking for something that's going to allow our military our soldiers to have the
[22:12]same rights and protections so that way they're not going to their chain of command or internally what they're doing is they're going outside the command and reporting something so suppose this this kind of situation would have been in
[22:23]place if we had this kind of bill in place vanessa could have reported this and they would have said wait a second this guy aaron robinson has a few of these problems like look at this this guy did she report anything at all she reported it to her family and
[22:35]friends and some of the soldiers she didn't do a formal report her bosses who are also above her who she's saying that we're sexually harassing her so we're going to
[22:46]look into it very powerfully and we already have started as you know and we'll get to the bottom of it and maybe things can come out that will help
[22:56]other people in a situation like vanessa well earlier speaking in the clip that was the family's attorney natalie kowam who was speaking about the bill
[23:07]which she helped draft let me bring back my guests i have leslie ricard chambers a former prosecutor and trial attorney and judge ashley wilcott who is a trial attorney
[23:18]as well as a juvenile court judge so uh leslie let me start with you i mean this bill uh it seems like a no-brainer and it's something that has been talked about for years and years i mean we know there has
[23:29]been this ongoing problem of sexual abuse within the military and fear of reporting the abuse because of how the chain of command works uh in the military leslie what do
[23:41]you think the president's voicing support in this meeting does to bolster the chances of the bill well his voice of support is very vital
[23:51]in pursuing this legislation and making sure that uh the issue gets addressed what often happens in uh situations like this is
[24:01]that you get a task force created right and that task force uh that conducts a review of
[24:09]a long list of incidences such as this and they go through a process where they determine whether or not there there's a breakdown or a flaw somewhere in the process
[24:20]and also you know you have to consider the fact that this is a young woman she's 20 years old and she was obviously subjected to some sexual harassment and she felt that she could not go to
[24:30]her superiors which she should have been she should have felt that she could do unfortunately she did not feel as though she could and so
[24:40]you have uh her killer who decided to take the incident into his own hands and and you know kill this young woman unfortunately and so
[24:50]you know what the president's backing i think that we can see a lot of support from both members of i'm sorry both houses of congress to say look there needs to be
[25:00]this issue needs to be addressed and we need to make sure that not only is it addressed at fort hood but we need to make sure that it's being addressed at other army bases military bases across the country
[25:12]because this is what our military is supposed to stand for supposed to stand for freedom um and the foundation of that freedom is threatened when there is not enough support of our
[25:23]military members and those who are pursuing a military membership at these at these bases dependent panel in fort hood
[25:37]an independent panel rather to review this case uh but judge ashley is this the same thing i mean why is legislation that would require an outside party to review cases like this
[25:48]so important versus just naming an outside panel on a case-by-case basis absolutely because it doesn't make a big enough systemic change if you do it on a case-by-case
[25:58]basis and the reason is this it doesn't make good common sense that you have to report sexual harassment to superior when superiors may be involved in it
[26:07]in some regard so it it makes really good sense as a system to prevent and stop sexual harassment sexual abuse is to have an
[26:18]independent party an independent panel that you can report to by doing it legislatively it would happen in every case and i'm going to say we all know the military does things
[26:29]very well and the things that it does and there's no reason i see why it shouldn't be able to set up an independent person panel review in every case in which there
[26:41]are allegations of sexual abuse or sexual harassment well we'll certainly be keeping our eye on what happens with this legislation as it moves through congress and i also want to note that during the meeting or
[26:52]after the meeting president trump offered to pay for the funeral services for vanessa guillen her parents uh her mother and sister have still not received the young soldiers remains because they were being held
[27:03]pending the investigation well let's switch gears now and talk about another tragic case but this one occurred nearly 11 years ago and to this day it continues we are talking about susan
[27:15]cox in 2009 susan cox a mom of two boys disappeared her husband josh powell had allegedly been abusive and threatening at least that's what susan herself wrote
[27:27]in a letter to family and what she told friends now he claimed he had taken their two young sons who you see there in the picture camping the night of susan's disappearance but it was freezing that night
[27:38]as the investigation into her disappearance unfolded nearly every sign pointed to her husband and in 2012 as the investigation into powell's role and his wife's disappearance
[27:48]continued powell attacked his five and seven-year-old boys with a hatchet then set the washington state house he had been living on on fire with the boys inside he killed the boys
[27:59]and himself fast forward a few years susan cox's parents sued washington state's department of social and health services claiming the social workers did not
[28:09]do enough to save the boys the suit was tossed out then it was appealed to the federal level finally in 2019 the u.s court of appeals ruled that this case could go forward it started in february
[28:21]only to be delayed once again because of the coronavirus well just a couple of weeks ago the civil trial resumed now the jury is deliberating in the case i want to play you
[28:32]some of the cox family's attorney's statements what he had to say just as we take a look here
[28:50]susan's disappearance the boys are placed in custody visits are moved to josh's home josh murders the boys as
[29:00]this process went on the state was provided more and more and more reason to be concerned about
[29:09]the safety of these boys and as it got closer to february 1 in the course hearing ladies and gentlemen
[29:19]that risk simply exploded the state took no action he lost tim atkins he wasn't going to
[29:38]get his boys back he had to do the psychosexual he had to do the polygraph that he was so concerned about so we can graph what happened ladies and
[29:49]gentlemen remembering that the state's obligation is primary obligation is the safety of the children and i think this pretty much tells you exactly what happened in this
[30:00]case they fail to follow their own policies they fail to follow the standard of care of the industry you will see in the jury instructions that failing to follow
[30:10]a policy is evidence of negligence well here it's overwhelming the evidence of negligence because the policy existed to accomplish the goal of the safety of the wars and they didn't follow it
[30:22]the result was the tragedy that we are here talking about there is a couple of there are a couple of instructions ladies and gentlemen that i want to particularly draw your
[30:32]attention to your instruction number 13 talks about the duty
[30:49]and it says in this case the state had a duty to exercise reasonable care for charlie and braden powell when they were under its care custody and control
[31:00]what does it say about the duty to exercise reasonable care it extends to risks that are foreseeable the foreseeability of the risk of harm is not limited to the actual harm
[31:11]suffered they don't have to foresee that he's going to hatch it douse and burn his children but rather it is determined by whether
[31:22]the actual harm fell within the general field of danger or should have been anticipated in other words the general field of danger that is identified in the state's
[31:32]own policies well that was the cox family attorney ted buck during closing arguments saying that it was the state's obligation to exercise
[31:42]reasonable care in this case they didn't have to foresee that josh powell was going to hatch at his children and burn the house down with them but they should have had reasonable care they should have listened to warnings from the powells
[31:54]that this man was not fit to care for these children i want to just add one more detail to this case which is on the day when killed his children and himself a social worker had dropped the kids off
[32:05]for a visit josh powell uh slammed the door on the visitation supervisor and then essentially locked her out before attacking the boys with a hatchet
[32:15]and setting the home on fire judge ashley let me start with you um what is your take the jury is deliberating it's hard to know which way they will go but do you believe based on
[32:26]what we know about this case that the state department of social and health services was negligent when it came to protecting these boys so let me first say a horrible case
[32:36]and there is no amount of protection anyone can offer a court the agency to prevent children from being harmed by those
[32:47]who are evil which is what i would call this father having said that if you look at the definition that we just witnessed him saying in his closing argument
[32:56]for negligence and failure to follow policy in that state is negligence as well as failure to meet the standard of care i believe based on what i know that
[33:07]there are good grounds that show this agency was negligent in this particular case of course that's for the jury to decide but i do believe there's been evidence
[33:19]of that in this case let's go back to the cox family's attorney and listen to a little bit more of his closing statement
[33:28]at 12 15 the first 9-1-1 call-outs we know at this point the boys have been doused in gasoline
[33:35]but there's no fire what's going on at 12 24 elizabeth griffin wall makes the second
[33:46]9-1-1 call the house has just caught on fire we know the boys are still alive because they died of carbon monoxide monoxide poisoning
[33:57]with soot in their windpipes it's 21 minutes and 44 seconds
[34:08]if elizabeth griffith hall is accurate in her estimates we know that they were conscious for
[34:18]some time because ladies and gentlemen they swallowed gasoline it was in their gastric content it was in their blood it made its way all the way to the vitreous of the
[34:28]eyeball the forensic experts all agreed you can't swallow when you're unconscious now dr nelson the state's expert
[34:43]said well it must have gotten in some other way because it wasn't in the urine but ladies and gentlemen if you look at the toxicology reports
[34:53]what would you find the urine was never tested for alcohol dr nelson is flat wrong i suggest you pay attention to the
[35:06]actual me who did the autopsy and told you most likely this got in their system i swallowed i suggest you listen to dr white
[35:16]who agrees with the ma's conclusions on it that slow curtain ladies and gentlemen of consciousness we know what overcame the voice at some
[35:27]point and only you could decide when and god they finally hit a level of
[35:40]unconsciousness where the pain went away ted buck just detailing some really horrific details about how those little boys died saying they
[35:51]died of carbon monoxide poisoning they were soot in their windpipes they had swallowed gasoline uh let me ask you i want to note another point here which is that in this civil
[36:02]case susan cox's parents are asking uh the court to award them 87 million dollars in damages saying that 87 million dollars equals
[36:13]5 million dollars for each minute the boys suffered at the hands of their father what do you make of that request and if the jury does find in
[36:23]their favor do you think it's realistic that they might get that amount of money i don't know if it's realistic but i can't tell you that it does sound punitive and i think that
[36:34]you know they are asking for a number that is out of the ordinary and that that's beyond consciousness because the events that took place surrounding
[36:46]the deaths of these poor boys is unconscionable and so you know i i do believe that the jury will make some type of connection or or nexus
[36:56]to that feeling of unconsciousness that yes you're asking for eight to seven million dollars and maybe you know that's that's far fetched but unfortunately you know these children's
[37:07]lost these children lost their lives in a very inhumane um and devastating way and so uh the 87 million to me um seems to be more punitive just really to illustrate the
[37:18]devastation of the deaths of these children as well as how um how traumatic the death was um you know losing their mother and then
[37:30]if you look at the picture of these beautiful boys i mean and i'm listening to the to the closing statement of the attorney it sounds like these children were
[37:40]made to swallow gasoline that is so horrible um i don't know that you can quantify um the the pain that the parents and i'm sorry that the family is experiencing by the
[37:52]deaths of these children and so um the 87 million to me is an illustration of not being able to quantify that absolutely i mean regardless of what
[38:03]happens with the verdict and the damages by asking for that much money they are certainly making a very stark point 87 million dollars five million dollars for every
[38:14]minute those boys suffered allegedly at the hands of their father we're going to take a quick break when we come back much more to talk about in this case about susan cox powell stick around we'll be right back after this well we are talking about the civil case
[38:32]involving susan cox powell the young mother who went missing back uh in some 11 years ago now actually in 2009 her husband always
[38:43]presumed to be the main suspect in her disappearance though her body was never found well fast forward 11 years her parents were finally allowed to bring a civil suit against
[38:55]washington state department of social and health services they claim that social workers didn't do enough to protect their grandsons who were killed by josh powell susan's husband the boy's
[39:06]father back in 2011 when he allegedly hatcheted them to death and blew up the house in which he and the boys were at that time truly tragic details we
[39:16]want to go back to some of the trial right now uh which we heard unfold in recent days the jury right now in washington state is actually deliberating in this case so we could get a verdict
[39:27]at any moment as to how they decide on the department of social and health services culpability in the case in the meantime we want to go back to some of what we heard in the trial of the last few days
[39:38]this is will be the only and final time that you hear from the state in this matter until we have the opportunity to talk to you after you've come back with
[39:49]whatever decision you're going to be making now we would all recognize that we've been on a very long road together here
[39:58]uh started back in february and all this time in order to address a very tragic incident one which most of us will never
[40:10]forget one that was not foreseen by the state now why do i say that and i say that
[40:21]because of what is occurring is what we were referred to and you've heard throughout the trial various stages hindsight
[40:31]einstein biased armchair quarterbacking second guessing you've heard throughout from the very beginning an opening statement spinning of what the actual evidence and
[40:42]facts is in this case there's no if ands or buts that it was a very tragic tragic matter but the state and we're going to show
[40:54]you in a moment that the state took this very serious they did their job they followed their policies and what we're going to ask of you is to
[41:05]evaluate this case based upon the information that was known at the time and that the states relies reliance upon professional evaluators the
[41:16]knowledgeable court the judge who was overseeing these proceedings and that was joseph diaz the attorney for the department of social and health services
[41:28]in washington state during his closing argument saying you heard spinning about the evidence and the facts in this case there are no ifs ands or buts it was a tragic matter but the state took this
[41:38]very seriously um judge wilcott what will the jury uh be considering i mean because it is sort of a he say he says they say in terms of how the
[41:48]department did handle it that's absolutely right so we know the jury is the trier of fact exactly what they have to determine is did dhs
[41:58]violate their own policy or not number one did they meet the standard of care number two all of the facts before them based on the evidence presented
[42:08]is what they have to use to answer those two very questions to decide whether or not the department was negligent in this case
[42:18]leslie we know that the courts ruled that the actual social workers themselves who dealt with this case could not be implicated or held responsible
[42:28]so it just goes to the department but what do you think in terms of what the jury will be considering and how they are going to to really decide if it was the department's fault i mean
[42:39]certainly josh powell had a very checkered past he was the key suspect in his wife's disappearance uh he was undergoing a psychosexual evaluation
[42:48]at this time should they have just cut off visitations with the children especially after uh the cox's has said we don't want them around our grandson or was it their duty to allow this visit to
[42:59]go forward well i think that the jury who's made up of everyday people they are going to be looking at whether or not
[43:08]these the department dropped the ball in number one making sure that these children were safe and number two if they had knowledge about uh
[43:17]their father's um history and his potential for violence and and other things whether or not they this department did what they were supposed to do to
[43:28]say keep these children safe and i i think that for me just sitting here um on the outside looking in in the trial if you will to me it looks like they they that they probably did
[43:40]and whether or not you want to put it on the individuals themselves who uh went out to the home to um conduct these investigations and then decided well there's nothing else that
[43:51]they needed to do or if you look at the i guess the policies related to how the department itself conducts investigations i think that
[44:02]either way that the juror could find that that these and that the employees as individuals dropped the ball and the employee or the the institution or the department itself definitely dropped the
[44:14]ball well we're going to be watching closely day two of jury deliberations underway be sure to stay tuned to our website longcrime.com for any developments on the verdict that does it for us today i want to thank you ladies
[44:25]both for joining me for this edition of the law and crime report we will see you back here next week stay tuned for regular
[44:32]programming here on long crime